


Called Home

by Destina



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: First Time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-04
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-02-03 08:21:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1737797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destina/pseuds/Destina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ragnar wants to see the damage for himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Called Home

**Author's Note:**

> Episode tag for 2x09, The Choice. Thanks to Killa for looking it over.

Ragnar's great hall was filled with the sounds of happy conversation, of families reunited and friends eager for tales of battle. Athelstan drank his cloudy ale and watched the people - his family, whether they felt the same, or not, no matter - with quiet contentment. So many had welcomed him back this night with raucous cheers and smiles. Those few who did not trust him were of no consequence, and there could be no awkwardness now; he knew where he belonged. 

It was good to be grounded again, unencumbered by heavy robes and heavy thoughts. 

He scraped the last of his stew from his wooden bowl and set it aside to be taken away by one of the slaves who stood vigil. Every time he turned his head, he discovered Ragnar watching him with that small, self-satisfied smile Athelstan had missed so much. 

When the warriors were well into their cups, Ragnar stood and leaned close. "Come with me," he said, his hand wrapped gently around the back of Athelstan's neck. Athelstan nodded and stood to follow him. Lagertha caught his eye as they passed, a pleased smile on her face, and a warm flush spread over Athelstan's body, centered on the touch of Ragnar's hand against his skin. 

They stepped out of the hall into the chill wind, and Ragnar steered them down the narrowest part of the thoroughfare. He paused before a closed door and said, "Go in." 

Athelstan pushed it open and found a living space enclosed between two buildings, too small for a family but large enough for one man to live in alone. A fire burned low in the hearth and a heap of clean furs made a nest upon the bedstead. 

The small table across the room held a few provisions - a pitcher, a cup, a loaf of bread, some wizened winter apples - and his meager possessions, left behind when last he sailed with his people back to Wessex, and the fate which had nearly claimed him there. 

He looked up at Ragnar and let his pleasure show in his smile. Ragnar nodded, satisfied. 

"Now you will show me," Ragnar said. He took Athelstan's hand and lifted it to trace the raised scars there with his fingertips. "These and any others."

Athelstan swallowed hard against the anxious lump in his throat, but he had known Ragnar would ask, and he would have to share the details. He sat down on the nest of furs and drew off his boots, slowly; Ragnar mirrored his actions, so that they were barefoot together. Even in the dim light, the healed wounds seemed raw and red, garish to Athelstan's eyes. "They hung me on a cross," Athelstan said quietly. "Nails, here, through my feet. And my hands."

Ragnar knelt before him and lifted Athelstan's foot with warm hands, resting it on his thigh as he touched the scars. "They meant for you to die." 

"Yes. King Ecbert came upon the scene and ordered them to release me." Athelstan had come to peace with the horror of those moments, but still his hands shook when he lifted his tunic and drew it over his head. Ragnar dropped his leathers and stripped off his shirt as well, and Athelstan shivered to see his friend's scarred body so revealed - a body he knew well, and had seen so many times, though he had tried not to see. 

He pulled his foot from Ragnar's grasp and turned to the side, so his back was visible to Ragnar, but at an angle. Ragnar rose from the ground and sat beside Athelstan on the bed. He took hold of Athelstan's shoulders and turned him more fully, so that the marks from his flogging were fully visible. 

Athelstan could not see Ragnar's face, but he heard his breath quicken, and the hands at his shoulders traveled down, smoothing across the raised welts. Athelstan had never seen them, of course; he had only known their fire, and had seen their horror in the eyes of the king's physician, who had treated him. 

Over and over, Ragnar's hands moved across his skin, as if he could erase the marks and the pain with his touch. When Athelstan could bear it no longer, he looked back over his shoulder. Ragnar's pale eyes were like ice. 

"I would kill the man who did this five hundred times and send him to a cold coward's death," Ragnar snarled, and sent a shiver of satisfaction down Athelstan's spine. He knew in his heart he should not want Ragnar to do violence for him, but a part of him had wanted little else since the moment Ecbert brought him down from the cross. That same part had smiled when he crept from Ecbert's stronghold, and had climbed aboard the longboat, seeking home. 

"He is already dead," Athelstan said. "Not by my hand, but by the hand of one of your warriors. I found him on the battlefield." He did not say that he stood and watched the man draw his last rattling breath, and did not call anyone for aid. 

"Is this all of it?" Ragnar's hands circled his waist, waiting, and Athelstan swallowed. "Or are there marks I cannot see?"

Athelstan lowered his head, though there was no reason for shame. Ecbert had not touched him in that way. No one had put hands on him intimately in England; it had been many months since he had allowed himself to think of it, of the girls he had tentatively bedded in the village, before his first battle. "Ecbert did not have me, if that is what you are asking." 

"It is what I am asking." Ragnar pulled at his shoulder until Athelstan turned back, half-facing him. His gaze traveled across Athelstan's face, lighting on the tiny scars concealed beneath his hair, above his forehead. With the gentlest touch imaginable, he cupped Athelstan's face in his hands and pressed a kiss there. 

Athelstan closed his eyes and slowly brought his right hand up to ghost along Ragnar's ribs. He was rewarded with a small gasp, and the feel of Ragnar's lips curving into a smile against his temple. 

"Your axe - can you wield it?" Ragnar asked softly, his breath warm against Athelstan's ear. 

Even though he knew that his answer would change nothing, and Ragnar would not suddenly turn his back, Athelstan could not fathom living with these people without accompanying them to war. He flexed his hand, shaping his fingers to Ragnar's side. "I learned to write again, in order to return to what I loved the most. In time I will find ways to wield a weapon as well as I held a quill." He met Ragnar's eyes. "For the same reason." 

The approval in Ragnar's eyes melted away into something hot and dark, raising the hair on Athelstan's bare arms. His eyes flicked down Athelstan's chest, then back again, and their frank scrutiny deepened the flush across Athelstan's body. A moment later, Ragnar's fingers closed around the bracelet on Athelstan's wrist, and his grip tightened, enough to make the metal bite into Athelstan's skin. "Once before I invited you to share my bed, but you refused. You were a holy man then, and my slave. Now you are one of us, and you have learned to make difficult choices. Tell me, how is it to be?"

The questions and fears which had once plagued him no longer troubled his thoughts. Athelstan knew that Auslag's wishes were not his concern, and that her true worries extended only to her legacy as Ragnar's wife and the mother of his children. As for his own purity - the question was settled when he laid his heavy cross down and snuck away from Ecbert's stronghold in the dead of night. He would come to peace with his life here, and he would find a new way. 

He tilted his face so his cheek pressed against Ragnar's, unsure if he could find the words. All his eloquence seemed to have fled him on the journey across the sea. But Ragnar knew him well, and took the gesture as it was meant; a moment later, Ragnar's mouth closed over his, and Athelstan was drowning in deep, dreamlike kisses. Ragnar took his time, opening Athelstan to his kisses even as his fingertips slipped over, around, beneath the bracelet Ragnar had kept close for him, until it could be returned. 

Smoke drifted over them as Ragnar pushed him firmly back into the furs, stripping off Athelstan's breeches and his own with a playful light in his eyes. He sprawled out beside Athelstan, unashamedly looking at every part of him, his delight plain. Athelstan resisted the urge to curl into Ragnar's body, and hide what little of himself Ragnar had not already known, but Ragnar interrupted those foolish doubts with more of those long, searching kisses. 

It was all the more startling when Ragnar's hand cupped his prick, and began to stroke him there without preamble. Athelstan's back arched, and he cried out as that hand moved faster, and faster still. Ragnar moved closer, the shocking heat of his body overwhelming, even as all the pleasure in the world seemed to center where Ragnar's hand moved. Then he swung himself over Athelstan, strong legs on either side of Athelstan's thighs, and clasped his own prick, the both of them encircled in his hand. 

The pleasure was its own kind of torture, and Ragnar's eyes locked to his, seeing everything. When Athelstan looked away, Ragnar turned his face back none too gently, his message clear; he took from Athelstan's mouth every cry, every bitten-back word, and would not let him escape it. 

"Which god do you hear now?" Ragnar whispered, grinning at him. 

Athelstan threw his head back as his climax neared, and listened - heard Njord in the wail of the winter wind, and Lofn in the rush of blood through his body; saw Loki in the flash of satisfaction in Ragnar's eyes, and Vor in the mysteries of his fate. 

"All of them," he whispered back, and gave himself over to their call.


End file.
